Stalking a Killer

Orderlies wheeled the transfer patient into the respiratory department of the Zhongshan No. 3 Hospital on the morning of Feb. 1. He was wheezing and could barely breathe. "I didn't think he'd last 24 hours," recalls Dr. Cao Hong, the department chief. As Cao and a nurse pried open the man's jaws and began an emergency intubation, inserting a pipe down his throat to resume the flow of oxygen, they became victims of what can only be described as the point-blank detonation of a virus bomb. "When we moved the tube down his throat, he started coughing," the doctor says....